


the color of hurt

by whatdoyoumean



Category: Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri (2017)
Genre: Angst, Hopeful Ending, Hospitalization, M/M, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-27
Updated: 2020-04-27
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:55:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23865604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whatdoyoumean/pseuds/whatdoyoumean
Summary: You don't think he realizes how close in proximity he is to you, how the breath of his words hit the corner of your mouth.
Relationships: Jason Dixon/Red Welby
Kudos: 26





	the color of hurt

**Author's Note:**

> cw: canon-typical homophobia and violence

You rise to consciousness, slowly, disoriented - but the blinding white behind your eyelids is familiar, and so is the throb of your face and the ache of separation in your cracked bones. You open your eyes to the hospital.

  


You know you are flighty in nature, quicker to run than to fight, but you are young. There is time for muscle-building later - for after teenage insecurities flutter away, and return and resettle as adult ones. 

There’s a gym on your route from home to work. Passing by, you often find yourself glancing (more than glancing) at people (policemen) lifting weight through the window, even though you’re not interested in weightlifting, yourself. (You don’t want to think about why you might be glancing.)

As far as exercise goes, you prefer to run. Your father was the same way, lean muscle steadily clinging to his bones, age lending itself a toner, not looser, appearance.

Your flightiness, however - your tendency to run – is not useful when the brain cannot put it into action. _Concussion,_ the doctor had read out, sounding muffled.

You wondered why you were so struck, so frozen, at that crucial moment. You didn’t start to wonder this until the doctor mentioned the concussion. And had your assaulter been anyone else, you would have chalked it up to that initial head injury, the forceful blows to the front of the head being enough (and the blows to the back, when you smack the floorboards and, later, the distant road). Add in the fact that of course you were surprised and fearful, and at a disadvantage against the training and weapon of the attacker (of your attacker). It’s no wonder you couldn't escape, or defend yourself.

You pretend not to realize the true reason you froze. You try to forget the unfamiliar light you saw in those brown eyes.

  


/////

  


Your mother liked to say you were a free-spirited kid, almost otherworldly; fae-like. Your father, later, told you she was right. He himself used to be, until his own father beat it out of him; and it reminded him of your mother just as much as everything else about you already did, anyway. The red hair, blue eyes, skin with angel kisses. He swears she gave you even more of those angel kisses, as soon as she had the chance, the day she had to leave you both.

When the acceptance letter for the advertising job came through in the mail, you couldn’t believe your luck. Ebbing was far enough away not to merit visits to your folks every weekend, but close enough to support each other, if a situation called for it.

It called for it too soon, but you know your dad will be okay. He has your brother, and plenty of friends in the town he's lived in for years. You needed a little change. You also needed a job.

  


Your new boss was a bit more feminine than the times allowed. A sprightly fellow. You got on well.

Sometimes there was a certain wistfulness between you two, even though the age gap was too wide for any interest to grow. And when he departed, he left a hole in the life you had haphazardly arranged here in this town, leaving you to seek a similar presence elsewhere. He hadn’t passed away, of course (though he very well might have by now, you think, and then try not to think again); he had something or other call him away to the West – a relative, a plea.

You still seek to fill that gap, but your subconscious has settled its hopes on a certain person, for reasons mostly unfathomable to you, given the lack of positive interaction between you and them. You only helped his mother, you insist. It doesn’t mean anything good will come of searching further down the family tree. She had had a simple question about the purpose of the medical images on the side of the cigarette box that she (and her son) draw from on the regular. Her brown eyes peered up at you, clocking you as the new employee, judging your worth. Your advertising classes fresh in your mind, you happily inform her, and she leaves slightly more satisfied than when she entered, though she hadn’t been unsatisfied from the start.

The daydreams about becoming close with that man go nowhere, of course.

  


Instead, you welcome your new colleague with open arms. Pamela. You are aware that she has and will have no hidden affections for you, nothing romantic, and you try not to feel too relieved by this. You had none for her in the first place, though the platonic permanence of your relationship might not be evident to the outside observer. You wield this fact as if it were a shield, doing nothing to deny the town gossip about what happens (supposedly ‘unavoidably’) between a man and a woman in the workplace.

You do not share these concerns with her, though you think she gets it anyway. (She is much smarter than what you’d gather without months of working with her. Most people are, you guess. And if you sometimes mention to her the progress of the civil rights movements, and talk aloud about the different types of love, she doesn’t accuse you of anything.) You adore her for this, and sometimes feel an unexplainable urge to change an intrinsic part of yourself for her; one ridiculous customer did mention that you and her would have beautiful babies. You can’t change yourself like that, of course, but you know your life would be easier if you could.

The blinds of the building across the road from your workplace seem to shift sometimes when you’re in the next room, but you tell yourself it’s nothing. It’s nothing, you insist, finding yourself in that room most often when wearing your favorite clothes, the ones that your younger brother complimented you for one day which you haven’t forgotten since. It’s nothing, you repeat, studiously ignoring the fact that the building across the road belongs to the town’s very own police department.

/////

You do not think he realizes how close in proximity he is to you, how the breath of his words hit the corner of your mouth – or maybe he does, and hates himself for it, and lets this fuel his rage even more. At the very least, you do not think this intimidation is without self-disgust, whether Jason knows it or not.

To the outsider, it seems like a general display of aggression, of defense for his superior officer, but you’re close enough to see the pupils dilate, to hear the slightest shudder on the intake of breath. You do not know what this means for the future, whether one of you may take a chance to act on this, or whether a chance will present itself at all. For now, you follow his barked orders, raise your hands, count a few beats. Try to deescalate the situation. Try to control the flow of your blood back upwards through sheer willpower. This is not a safe situation, and you try to convince your body of that.

It’s difficult.

  


“Think you can get away?”

In another context, with a different tone, this would have drawn a wildly different reaction out of you. As it is, you only get in a second or two more of struggling before you are grabbed--

You cannot help feeling the final, all-consuming wrack of betrayal as he propels you out of the (thankfully already smashed) window. You know this betrayal is misplaced. (You thought your history of shared glances had meant something). He owes you nothing. Somehow this fact hurts you even more, and as you struggle on the pavement, (barely noticing the halted traffic and shocked noises around you, using up what’s left of your brainpower to stew over these thoughts instead of to wonder why no one’s helping you) the ending kick to your face seems fitting.

  


/////

  


You wonder why you did not recognize those brown eyes, that voice. You have much to blame it on, of course – your concussion, the bruising around your eyes and ear, the blinding white of the bandages (matching the blinding white of the room), his extensive burn scarring underneath, his strained vocal cords, his bloodshot eyes – but you cannot bring yourself to accept this as justification. It was as if those years of heated eye contact were for naught.

(Then again, you haven’t experienced such a beating for a while, and in Ebbing not at all. (Your childhood speaks differently, given your failure to impress your peers.) But you’re amazed to realize you’re not used to it anymore.)

But this is a place of healing. Now you know, at least, that he is here. He’s – different now, too.


End file.
